Vehicle recalls are more common than you think. Last year, car makers issued more than 70 in Australia.

When the wheels fall off

To recall or not to recall? It's not even a tough question for Australian car makers, with those contacted by Drive unanimously agreeing they can't be too cautious when it comes to safety.

That means the headline-grabbing major recalls of recent years are likely to continue, as manufacturers maintain they will take a hard-line approach to fixing even the simplest of faults that could constitute a safety hazard.

Are brands tempted to become even more cautious about marginal safety issues as society becomes more litigious? No one will admit their approach to recalls is shaped in part by consumer sentiment, or that shades of grey about what constitutes a recall even exist.

''From our perspective, a recall is a recall and we've got the guidelines there that tell us exactly what a recall is and what it isn't,'' Mazda Australia spokesman Steve Maciver says. ''At the end of the day, if there's a recall to be done, we'll certainly do a recall. If it's deemed by the code to be a safety concern, it's a recall and that's it, as far as we're concerned.''

''Are we more conservative? Not necessarily. We've always had a mature process for gathering the information.''

Volvo — which has issued the largest number of recall notices in Australia in recentyears (25 since the start of 2010) and has the most-recalled model currently on sale (the XC60 soft-roader, with 16 recalls since it was launched in 2008) — admits unashamedly to a safety-first approach.

''We have a bloody strong record when it comes to safety and that shapes our thinking on these things,'' Volvo Australia spokesman Oliver Peagam says.

''I think you're damned if you do butdamned if you don't. But we've also gotastrong reputation for safety, so it's importantfor us to acton every recall we get from overseas.

A spider infestation forced a recall of 50,000 Mazda6s.

''A lot of our engines are in different model mixes. So when those types of recalls come in, it affects a greater number of vehicles. A lot of the time a recall comes in and it's a check process rather than any sort of fix.''

If you are tempted to think that recalls are rare and won't happen to your car, think again. Last year 77 recall notices were lodged by car companies doing business in Australia, seeking to recall more than 295,000 cars. The previous year, 100 motions recalled almost half a million vehicles.

This year, more than 50,000 vehicles have been recalled in the first quarter.

However, figures from the past decade show that recalls are neither trending upwards in size or scope, nor downwards. Peak years of 100 and 98 recall notices were recorded in 2010 and 2004, respectively.

Instead, the numbers are seemingly random — a faulty component discovered just weeks after a model goes on sale could affect mere dozens of cars, while the same issue going undetected for years could eventually involve the high-profile recall of tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of cars.

One example is the Honda Accord Euro built between 2003 and 2008. More than 45,000 examples were recalled last year by the Japanese manufacturer after it discovered a power steering hose could crack and leak fluid on the hot exhaust, causing a potential fire hazard.

That helped Honda to the dubious honour of being the manufacturer that recalled the most cars in Australia last year.

Including the Accord Euro, it called back more than 110,000 cars for some form of rectification, capping a horror year from a once high-flying car maker still struggling to recover from the devastating November flood in Thailand that inundated one of its main manufacturing plants.

Ferrari's $500,000-plus 458 supercar was plagued by fires.

Honda's tally in 2011 was more than double the next most prolific source of recalls, Holden.

Despite Honda's annus horribilis, mention ''recall'' in any game of word association and almost certainly the most common response will still be ''Toyota''.

Since Toyota began hitting the news in 2009 and 2010 with notifications of a string of embarrassing safety shortfalls that were linked in some cases to deaths, injuries and massive fines, recalls have shifted from a motoring section sidebar to front-page news.

Recalls were often comparatively small, isolated events until 2005, when Ford called back a massive 3.8 million cars in the US to disconnect a cruise-control switch allegedly linked to more than 1100 engine fires.

The same year, Toyota recalled almost 1million vehicles in the US and Japan to fix a steering rod that could reportedly snap without warning, leaving the driver unable to steer.

The US-based National Highway Traffic Safety Administration linked 16 crashes, including three deaths and seven injuries, to the fault, and Toyota was subsequently slapped with a $US16.4 million fine for waiting 11 months after the issue was identified in Japan to issue the US recall.

It didn't end there for Toyota. Since 2009, it has pulled almost 15 million cars from the world's roads — including several models in Australia — for potential faults including sticking accelerator pedals, floor mats that could trap the accelerator, braking problems, stalling engines, steering defects, fuel leakages, airbag non-deployment and malfunctioning seatbelt buckles.

The frequency, scale and seriousness of the problems have been massive blows to the Japanese company, which built its reputation on high-quality products and bulletproof reliability.

But for every headline-creating, potentially catastrophic issue, there are tens, even hundreds, of others that receive little or no media attention and are resolved via a clearly worded letter to the owner, followed by a prompt visit to the dealer for a minor rectification.

It's also worth noting that for every recall action to urgently address a safety-related issue, there are also numerous service campaigns initiated, which can also tend to manufacturing faults and widespread wear-and-tear issues but do not affect the safe running of the car.

Perusal of Australia-based issues of the past decade on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Product Safety Recalls website (recalls.gov.au) points to an increasing number of large-scale, multi-model actions, or ''mega-recalls''.

Efficiency-driven car companies are finding new ways to share vehicle underpinnings and drivetrains across numerous models and even different marques. They also use common components throughout their range and share them with aligned partners and even their rivals. If one faulty component — a $2 clip that secures a fuel line, for example — fails on even a handful of cars and causes a fuel leak with the potential to start a fire, it could trigger a recall of hundreds of thousands of vehicles that share the clip and cost tens of millions of dollars to address.

An exorbitantly expensive advertising and rectification campaign isn't the only cost for car companies. There's also the unwelcome glare of the media spotlight and potential damage to brand credibility, not to mention the human cost, should a failure occur on the road and cause an accident.

A small-scale example of such a mega-recall occurred in February, when Volkswagen Australia identified that an injection pipe in one of its diesel engines was susceptible to ''engine resonances under certain operating conditions'' that could cause cracking, resulting in a fuel leak and, ''in the worst case'', an engine fire.

The engine in question is used in the company's Golf, Jetta, Passat, Tiguan and Transporter vehicles, as well as subsidiary brand Skoda's Octavia and Superb. It issued a recall notice for 7181 Volkswagens and 85 Skodas.

Skoda Australia managing director Matthew Wiesner, who is also an appointed spokesman for the Volkswagen group — which includes the high-end Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti brands — acknowledges the potential for multiple models and even numerous brands to be dragged into a recall action is ''the other side'' of the benefits driven by the group's multi-brand strategy.

''It's great creating a significant volume base around certain core drivetrains but, yes, there is a risk that if something goes slightly amiss you're going to affect more than one model in one brand,'' he says. ''It might affect a couple of models in a number of brands across the group.

''Is it any greater risk than where the automotive business was 10years ago? Probably not. Let's face it, recalls are something that the industry has been faced with all the time. It's something none of us like but that's why we have good warranties in place, to make sure we look after the products that are out in the field.

''The pressure is certainly on our engineers and our brands to make sure we get it right when it comes to drivetrains. You look at some of the recalls that have been out there from other brands, and there are some pretty big numbers, but when you're talking about some of the markets that we're playing in, it places a lot of pressure on the engineers to make sure they do get it right.''

Mazda's Maciver says the move towork extensively with common platformsand components will bring its own benefits to outweigh the risk ofmega-recalls.

''With the advent of SkyActiv technology, we're going to be building a whole variety of cars off that same SkyActiv platform and also using the same SkyActiv engines of different capacities, so there is going to be an increased level of sharing of components,'' he says. ''That said, with that sharing, you'd imagine there's a lot of benefits to be had in terms of increasing of expertise of working with particular components or platforms, so it's not something we anticipate [will create] any extra issues for us in terms of recalls.''

Is it really that difficult to ''get it right'', as Wiesner puts it? To create a vehicle that candrive from A to B in total safety, withevery component doing its job exactlyas advertised? It seems it is.

The recently released J.D.Power survey, a respected measure of post-purchase rectifications in the US, shows the top-scoring brand — Toyota's luxury offshoot, Lexus — still registered 86 problems for every 100 vehicles it built for the American market. Only two manufacturers (Porsche was the other) scored less than 100, or an average of less than one problem for each vehicle sold.

Given such a high rate of problems, it's unsurprising that failures occasionally happen to components that are more critical to the safety and well-being of the car's inhabitants than a broken cupholder or ill-fitting trim piece.

Holden's Porritt says the automotive industry needs to deal with ''some of the most challenging usages'' of its vehicles in real-world conditions.

''You look at what our product has to go through every day in terms of the technology that's baked into it and the usage patterns that the customers put it through,'' he says.

''A computer sits on a desk. Its operating environment is relatively stable day by day. When you look at the complexity that [the automotive industry] deals with, that's why recalls in the automotive industry are in the public domain so much.

''Why can't we build the unrecallable car? We control our suppliers very well but you're dealing with an incredibly complicated machine that spits out an incredibly technically complicated product.

''Every so often what you will get is a variation within a small component. The upshot is that we're dealing with small degrees of variation and we make the appropriate call relative to the performance in the field of that variation.''

Since Toyota's well-publicised multiple recalls of a few years ago, and several multimillion-dollar fines in the US for its failure to report the faults within the required period, the company has fallen from the top spot for global sales — although several factors other than the recalls are likely to have contributed to this.

Porritt says a poorly handled recall can ''absolutely'' cause significant damage to a brand. ''Having said that, we need to emphasise that [recalls] are good for the end customer because we know the end customer gets the safest product we can provide them,'' he says.

''But if it's presented badly, then of course there's the potential to damage a brand.''

Wiesner says how car makers respond is vital to limiting the damage. ''From a market perspective, I think if customers see that brands are addressing these issues immediately with urgency, then I think that's what's expected from anyone.

''I would imagine that for any brand in any industry, any continuing problems would not be a positive but, ultimately, you'll be measured on how you address them and how quick you are to respond and take care of the customers.''

Within the next few years, that response could be almost instantaneous, Porritt says. ''Think about the nature of the industry; it's constantly evolving new technology and as it does that there's learning along the way,'' he says.

''Look at electronics. Consider the computer, phone and software industries. People are constantly updating those devices for bug fixes and that's now considered normal behaviour, even essential for some of those products.

''Vehicles have been considered differently. They've been considered mechanical devices and supported by invisible computers behind the scenes. It's fair to say now that the computer has a more overt role.

''As consumer expectations change, the industry will respond with potentially more software updates and technology is going to play a part here, too. There will be better connectivity of the vehicle to the web and that may simplify the update process for the customer.

''Saving a customer a trip to the dealership is a real possibility. You might see[on your vehicle display] 'we would liketo update your car', click a button and it happens.''

Come in spider

A spider less than one centimetre in length, with a fondness for petrol-sniffing, and a potentially lethal bonnet emblem were at the centre of two of the more bizarre recalls in recent years.

Last year Mazda recalled more than 50,000 Mazda6 mid-size sedans built at a Mazda-Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan after discovering yellow-sac spiders had found their way into the cars' fuel systems and were spinning webs in the vent lines. This increased pressure on the fuel system, with the potential to cause the petrol tank to crack. Mazda responded by installing a simple spring mechanism into the fuel tank's vent line, stopping the spiders from entering.

Animal welfare group PETA added a bizarre postscript to events, offering to humanely remove any spiders from affected cars — as long as it could keep the car afterwards. It's not known whether any Mazda6 owners took up the generous offer.

Bentley, meanwhile, called back 820 examples of its Arnage, Brooklands and Azure models in the US, Canada and Europe over fears its famous ''winged B'' bonnet ornament could injure people.

The cars featured an optional raised bonnet ornament that was designed to retract in an accident, stopping it from becoming a weapon in a pedestrian impact. A dealer noticed the spring beneath the ornament had a tendency to corrode, compromising its effectiveness.

A flammable adhesive glue used in wheelarch assembly was the cause of an embarrassing spate of fires in Ferrari's hero 458 Italia supercar in 2010.

Several 458s in different countries were severely damaged or gutted by fire — as many as nine in the space of 90days, one website reported — which was traced to the deformation of a heat shield in the wheelarch under hot conditions. That brought the shield into contact with the exhaust system, where the adhesive glue could smoulder and catch fire.

Ferrari recalled 1200examples of the $500,000-plus car, including the eight it had sold in Australia.

Another baffling case of spontaneous combustion involved US giant General Motors' new hero car, the electric Volt hatchback, which is due to arrive in Australia this year. Late last year, a Volt caught fire in a parking lot where it had been lying dormant for three weeks after taking part in a side-impact crash test. Investigations concluded a coolant leak had crystallised and caused an electrical short-circuit that started the fire.

GM recalled 8000Volts sold in the US for rectification work and also pledged it would send out a specialist team to drain the battery pack of any Volt if the car's satellite navigation system notified the company's technicians of an accident.

Examples of the Volt to be sold in Australia will include a permanent fix for the issue.